Facebook removed fake accounts linked to President Donald Trump’s former political adviser, Roger Stone, for “removed inhuman behavior”.
According to Facebook, the social network removed pages and pages posted as Florida residents linked to the hate group Proud Boys. Fake accounts posted about local Florida politics, content hacked prior to the 2016 election released by Wikileaks, and Stone’s books, tests, and websites.
Although Facebook said that most of these accounts had been inactive since 2016, a total of 54 accounts, 50 pages and four Instagram accounts had been removed, all linked to Stone and its affiliates. Facebook stated that approximately 260,000 users followed one or more of these pages.
“We have seen and taken action against using domestic political figures [coordinated inauthentic behavior] In the past, and we know they will continue to try to deceive and mislead people, ”wrote Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy. “Such domestic campaigns raise a particularly complex challenge by blurring the line between healthy public debate and manipulation.”
Facebook describes “coordinated inhumane behavior” as “groups of pages or people working together to mislead others about who they are or what they are doing.”
Facebook said it was able to identify the full scope of these fake accounts and pages due to the issuance of a search warrant to the public in the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Stone was convicted of seven felony counts in November in connection with Muller’s investigation, including lying to save Trump about the 2016 campaign’s efforts to reach WikiLeaks.
reached out to Facebook to find out how it plans to stop rather than spot, with fake accounts such as elections coming to a close. We will update this story when we hear back.
These pages are removed after Facebook’s third and final civil rights audit was issued. A 100-page review found that Facebook’s decision not to investigate the judgments has made its platform vulnerable to politicians’ misuse, so as to interfere with voting and suppress civil rights.
The audit’s authors refused to take action against recent posts by Trump by Facebook – taken down by many competitors such as Twitter – “a tremendous blow to all policies that attempt to ban voter suppression.”
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